Page 80 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

He didn’t give me the statement back, his eyes crinkling ever so slightly. I could imagine the way his mouth curved into an arrogant smirk that conveyed every thought I already heard rattling inside his head. It pleased him to know just how much he disoriented me, gave him a twisted sense of male satisfaction to know that he’d rendered me damn near speechless.

It didn’t happen often, and he viewed it as a triumph in and of itself.

He pulled away from me slowly, tearing his forehead from mine as his face came into better view. He still took my breath away, his brutal beauty the kind of face those poets wrote sonnets for, that women sang about around the fire, dreaming for themselves.

He was a song of beauty in the wind, a harmony moving enough to make listeners cry.

But it was me that he watched as he lowered himself to a single knee, raising my hand in his to press his mouth to my knuckles. He held out his hand to Medusa, nodding to her in some wordless communication that she seemed to understand. She smiled as she pulled a dagger from its sheath, pressing the tip into the pad of my mate’s thumb. He turned my hand over as he traced the blood that welled in response into the palm of my hand. “I vow to be the sword at your back, to protect you from those who would stand in your way or make moves behind your back. I vow to support you in all you do, and to believe in the world you see for our future and our children’s future. My sword and my life are yours, min asteren. In this life and the afterlife, in this world and what comes next, you are my guiding light—the answer to the questions I didn’t know to ask.”

I chuckled, the sound coming out hoarse and throaty as emotion swelled within me. The love he spoke of, the love he felt, would have been impossible to comprehend if it was not for the fact that I felt it, too. If it hadn’t been for the incommunicable way that I knew nothing in this world would be worth having if I didn’t have him at my side.

Freedom would not matter. Friends would no longer appeal to me.

Life for me would simply cease to be.

“You are the King of Winter,” I said, attempting to pull him up from his feet. “Should it not be me swearing my loyalty to you as my lord and husband?”

“What kind of King would I be if my first priority was not to serve my Queen in all things?” he asked, allowing me to pull him to his feet as he touched his mouth to mine. The question rebounded in my mind, dancing around with the stark difference between the way he viewed me and the human men who’d thought to own me had seen me.

“You have a Kingdom to run. What is one woman compared to that?” I murmured against his mouth, smiling into him as he reciprocated the gesture, pulling away just far enough for me to see the softness in that icy blue gaze, the glacier melting only for me.

“You are everything, my star. None of this matters if I do not have you.”

He waited for my response, and I felt a flicker of uncertainty from him. A moment where he worried I might reject him as I had done so many times in the past. My stomach cramped with the pain of knowing I had put that there, that I had no one to blame but myself for the way this gentle, loving man doubted himself. I reached up, cupping his cheek in my palm. His blood smeared against his skin with the touch, but he didn’t care as he leaned into the contact. “You have me, Caldris. In this life and the next, I am yours.”

His mouth touched mine, his thoughts swirling and mixing with mine until I couldn’t tell what were mine and what were his. When we parted, we would continue on our journey.

But for now, I needed to feel.

FIFTY-ONE

ESTRELLA

We crested the curved hilltop, the grass beneath my feet offering the only cushion I would receive. I should have been used to the strenuous effort of travel at this point, of the way my feet ached in different spots depending on the terrain I navigated. But after hours of walking endlessly to reach the shelter Medusa drove us toward, I wanted nothing more than to find a random cave where I could rest for even just a few hours. The light was dimming in the horizon on the other side of the hills that formed before us, but it was the village that sprawled through the valley that caught my eye.

It was the open field at the center where figures of men and women fought. It was not screams of pain that lifted up toward the hilltops, but the ring of laughter and joy that reached me.

“What is this place?” Caldris asked as we all hurried down the hill. There was a fence surrounding the village, and while we could see over the top of it from our vantage point, I wondered how itmight provide protection from the creatures prowling through the night in Tartarus.

“This is the Tithe settlement,” Medusa explained, hurrying down the hill at our side. The wolves ran and frolicked through the trees that littered the hillside, and I made eye contact with Fenrir just briefly enough to nod him on. They would not be joining us in the settlement, instead enjoying the night to be free to hunt and be as wild as they were born to be.

“Be safe,” I told him, hoping he would convey the message to his sisters. It bothered me that my relationship with them was not as deep, that I couldn’t share the same bond with them as I did with their brother. But as the girls circled back, brushing against Caldris as they went, I thought maybe that had its advantages. In some ways, it felt as if I had stolen Fenrir from him, at least I could not influence his bond with the other two.

“Stole my fucking dog,” Caldris said, but his voice was laced with humor. I could hear the taunting smile in it, and feel the way he did not fault me for the theft.

“You cannot steal what was never truly his,” Fenrir said, though his voice was sympathetic. A wolf belonged to no one, but our bond had the potential to eclipse the affection he and Caldris shared for one another. “Do not worry for us tonight. It is I who must worry for you always, Tempest.”

With those ominous thoughts, he and his sisters fled into the trees permanently, leaving me to make my way toward the valley. The gates of the wall spread open, allowing us to slide inside quickly and efficiently.

A slow river flowed down through the gap in the hills toward the settlement, seeming to come from nowhere. There was no magic attached to this river, no innate feelings and emotions that came to the surface from my proximity as I knelt at the riverside and scooped my hand into the waters there. Caldris did the same at my side, drinking deeply from his cupped hands. His spirit form did not require sustenance in spite of the magic that made him tangible and real in this place, so long as his body remained cared for, and with the way that time worked differently here, I imagined not enough had passed in Tar Mesa for it to be a concern.

But that didn’t mean he could not revel in the feeling of cool water on his tongue, of the relief it provided after traveling through a land surrounded by flames.

“Greetings, Tempest,” a man said as he stepped up beside us onthe riverbank. I hurried to my feet, suspicion in my gaze as I stared him down. He’d pulled his gray hair back into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, his eyes such a pale blue that they were almost white. His face was aged and weathered in a way I had not seen in some time given the proximity to immortal beings and Fae since coming to Alfheimr.

Human, I realized with a start. The man before me was mortal just the same as my own mother was where she hid away in Catancia.

“Hello,” I said calmly, arching a brow to wait for him to tell me what he wanted from us.

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